René Gaffé

René Gaffé was a Belgian collector of Cubist, Surrealist, Dadaist, African, and Oceanic art. Orphaned at an early age, he spent his youth at the Athénée Royal boarding school in Ostende where he studied ancient classics before choosing to become a journalist. During World War I, Gaffé was director of counterespionage in Amsterdam under the name of René Chambry, a pseudonym which he also used to publish several books on Serbia. After the war, he was recognized and decorated by France and Belgium. Gaffé stayed in the Netherlands for a few years as a correspondent for major newspapers such as Le Soir, L’Indépendance Belge, and L’Etoile Belge and founded L’Echo Belge, a Belgian French-language daily. He later became a perfume magnate, earning millions to spend on his diverse collection.

According to a sales catalogue from an auction of his collection in 2001, Gaffé developed a passion for art during World War I, when he assembled a “splendid collection” of African objects and works by Giorgio de Chirico. In the 1920s, he bought artworks mainly from André Breton and Paul Eluard, who acted as dealers; by 1925 Gaffé owned Georges Braque's Still Life with Metronome (1909; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Promised Gift of the Leonard A. Lauder Cubist Collection), which he had purchased via Breton.

In the 1930s he gathered an impressive collection of Cubist and Surrealist works, which were exhibited at the Zwemmer Gallery in London in 1937. Among those included were Picasso's portrait of Wilhelm Uhde (1910; private collection, Daix 338), and Woman with a Mandolin (1910; The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Both works were first owned by Uhde himself before being purchased by Breton for Gaffé. Gaffé’s collection also included one of Picasso’s largest papiers collés, Man with a Hat and a Violin (1912; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), and one of the first proto-Cubist figures, The Black Dancer (1907; Daix 54). In 1938 Gaffé sold these two works for a pittance to the collector Roland Penrose along with thirteen others by Picasso, ten by de Chirico, and twelve by Joan Miró. At the time Gaffé believed he was terminally ill, but he eventually recovered and assembled another collection of similar quality with remarkable examples of African and Oceanic art.

In the mid 1950s, Gaffé retired to Cagnes-sur-Mer in the south of France with his wife, Jeanne, where they transformed their house into a museum-like space, installed with the collection. He sold his important holdings of Dadaist and Surrealist books at the Hôtel Drouot in Paris (April 26–27, 1956). After Gaffé passed away in 1968, his wife continued living with the collection until her own death in 2001. According to the terms of Gaffé’s will, the collection was then sold at auction, with proceeds benefitting UNICEF. Among the works sold were impressive examples of Cubism such as Picasso’s bronze Head of Fernande (1909; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia) and Fernand Léger’s Le Moteur (The Engine) (1918).